Helpless
by natalie.grey
Summary: Great Gatsby scene rewrite, oneshot. I wrote this as an assignment for my lit class, but never got feedback, so I'm throwing it up here for my own vanity.


"I've got something to tell you, old sport—" Jay begins to say.

Daisy lurches to the edge of the couch, hand flying to his arm. She reaches with her other hand out to Tom, who is looking at her like she is a stranger. She lets her eyes plead with his. "Please don't! Please let's all go home. Why don't we all go home?"

Nick realizes his duty and starts to his feet. "That's a good idea," he stammers. "Come on, Tom. Nobody wants a drink."

Tom doesn't move, his hard gaze fixed with Jay's in silent hostility. His voice is shaking when he speaks, and dangerously low. "I want to know what Mr. Gatsby has to tell me."

Jay tilts forward in his seat, away from Daisy, and her fingers grab at his pink sleeve, begging. He is attempting one of his infectious smiles, and the muscles in his face come just short, trembling on the edge between hope and desperation. "Your wife," he says, "doesn't love you. She's never loved you. She loves me."

Daisy's mouth twitches into a smile, while my husband's face goes red. "You must be crazy!" he cries.

Jay jumps to his feet. He has lit up, as though somebody finally found the switch behind his face. His eyes are bright, his voice scandalously joyous. "She never loved you, do you hear?" he exclaims. In his countenance is that smoldering adoration, the devotion of his entire self to the girl she used to be. He is seeing her now—eyes a little brighter and arms empty, reaching toward him to soak in all his yearning until it seeps into her bones, lets her feel as important as she wants to be.

He doesn't turn to look at Daisy, though, now. His eyes are glazed, smile painted onto his face as he gazes at a spot just over Tom's shoulder, and he crows the words to that invisible Daisy like they are the first, last, and only true profession of love humanity shall ever see. "She only married you because I was poor, and she was tired of waiting for me. It was a terrible mistake, but in her heart she never loved anyone except me!"

Daisy leaps to her feet, unable to sit still a moment longer. She grabs for Nick's arm, because she has the sudden and singular impression that the room is spinning fast as the earth beneath us, and she will fall if she doesn't lean on something. Nick's arm isn't still either—a tremor is coursing through it, but his are the only eyes that will look at Daisy.

He does look at her, and stumbles into movement. He touches Jordan's elbow, and she nods lazily, avoiding everybody's eyes as she starts toward the door, mumbling something about leaving us to our business.

Jay and Tom jump toward Jordan as one, and insist with escalating inflexibility that they stay—sit down—have a drink.

Daisy's knees shake, and her fingers tighten around Nick's arm. Tom is giving her this look, and a grimace of a smile. "Sit down, Daisy," he says. "What's been going on? I want to hear all about it."

Daisy's mouth is open and empty when Jay speaks up. "I told you what's been going on," he says. "Going on for five years—and you didn't know."

She just stares at him.

Tom turns on her now, his gaze cutting between his wife and the preposterous man in the pink suit. Daisy blinks hard, tries to blink the Jay that she loves back into her eyes, the one that has waited with the patience of a saint for her to make the first decision that will ever really matter.

"You've been seeing this fellow for five years?"

Daisy's tongue pushes at that final decision now, but she can't shove it out of her mouth before Jay steps in front of her. "Not seeing," he says. "No, we couldn't meet. But both of us loved each other all that time, old sport, and you didn't know." His face turns ugly, a cruel, hard mask. "I used to laugh sometimes," he continues, "to think that you didn't know."

Tom leans back into his chair, his broad self settling in to hear more of Jay's persistent fable. "Oh," he says, raising an eyebrow, "that's all."

Jay is shaking now, and his silence makes Tom erupt. "You're crazy!" he insists. "I can't speak about what happened five years ago because I didn't know Daisy then—and I'll be damned if I see how you got within a mile of her unless you brought the groceries to the back door." He turns to Daisy now. He doesn't need to convince Jay, so his eyes wrestle themselves into gentleness, watching her face. "Daisy loved me when she married me and she loves me now."

"No," says Jay.

"She does, though. The trouble is that sometimes she gets foolish ideas in her head and doesn't know what she's doing. And what's more I love Daisy too. Once in a while I go off on a spree and make a fool of myself, but I always come back, and in my heart I love her all the time."

"You're revolting." Daisy hears the words stumble across her numb tongue, and wonders calmly at how they taste. She shakes herself into scorn, turning to Nick again. "Do you know why we left Chicago? I'm surprised that they didn't treat you to the story of that little spree."

Nick is quiet, and Jay walks over to stand beside her. "Daisy," he reassures her, "that's all over now. It doesn't matter any more. Just tell him the truth- that you never loved him—and it's all wiped out forever."

Daisy looks at Tom without seeing him, no, seeing an image of him as Jay does—a bumbling prig who has been sleeping with someone who isn't his wife. Even that doesn't manage to hurt, but it makes it easier to say the words. "Why—how could I love him—possibly?"

"You never loved him," Jay slips the words into Daisy's ear.

Her eyes wander, rove about the room in a blind search for the door. They find Jordan's blank face, and Nick's, which just looks lost. They find a glance of her own face in the mirror on the wall. The girl in the mirror looks so unsure, so she tests out the words in the air. "I never loved him."

"Not at Kapiolani?" Tom demands.

"No," she hears herself say.

"Not that day I carried you down from the Punch Bowl to keep your shoes dry?" The rough gentleness in his voice bullies the ache in Daisy's head. He draws a breath, less sure this time. "Daisy?"

"Oh, please don't!" she cries, eyes on the cigarette and match between my fingers, but nothing will stop shaking, and she empties her hands onto the floor, watches the match smolder and smoke on the carpet. She finally lets the chords in her throat fill and spill over with despair, pleading. "I love you now—isn't that enough? I can't help what's past." Sobs begin to bubble out of her chest, unchecked. The decision, that final decision falls from Daisy's lips, mingles with the smoke that is rising in wisps from the carpet. "I did love him once, but I loved you too."

Gatsby begins to repeat her words, confused, and Tom's confidence expands, filling the room. Their words fly in the air, and Daisy shakes at the edge of that decision, teetering a few times to and fro, between the husband and the lover of the girl in the mirror.

"Oh, please," Daisy cries. "Please, let's get out."

And then all she feels is her heart folding in on itself, crumpling with intense relief into a tiny, wrinkled thing that rattles around between her ribs.


End file.
